Rule Forty Two: The Self-Aggrandizing Website of Gavin Edwards

What was the feud between Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement? How’d it start?

On Pavement’s 1994 album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, their song “Range Life” included this lyric: “Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins / Nature kids, but they don’t have no function / I don’t understand what they mean and I could really give a fuck.” For understandable reasons, Corgan took umbrage. “I think it’s rooted in jealousy,” he said. “There’s always been flak we’ve gotten from certain bands that somehow we cheated our way to the top.” Pavement had never toured with the Pumpkins at the time of the song. They said Corgan took measures to maintain that status, keeping them off the ’94 Lollapalooza package (he denied it). “But we got on the next year,” noted Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg. “Sonic Youth, Hole, Beck: a much cooler year.” The feud never escalated to gunplay or beatdowns, just Corgan’s final insult: “People don’t fall in love to Pavement… they put on Smashing Pumpkins or Hole or Nirvana, because these bands actually mean something to them.”

(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)